The Lake Ching murders

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The vigorous old man shifted on his sitting mat and stared through the open doorway at the terraced fields of the island. He and his had built those terraces from nothing. Brought something – wealth – from barrenness. Every ridge they had built. Every water barrier. Every path hewn from the stone. Even the soil they had made. They had put into the land and then reaped from that land. And they had kept to themselves. For centuries they had kept to themselves. Unwanted by their Han Chinese neighbours on the mainland, they had turned inward. For their sustenance. For their mates. For their lives. The wind off the lake momentarily swirled into the hut. The dense aroma from the fermenting pails of human fecal matter wafted into the room. “Must never forget that we are nothing more than the stuff that passes through us,” he thought. Then he laughed. His many, many years entitled him to laugh without explaining why. The others waited.

Finally he spoke. “You’re sure it was necessary, Jiajia?”

“Hesheng was losing hope, Iman,” said his first greatgrandson.

“And it is now done?”

“Yesterday, Iman.” The old man looked at Jiajia. Many years divided them. Many years. But Iman felt for this one above his many other progeny. He had insisted at the boy’s birth that he be placed on the highest, most exposed, hill of the island for a full day – sundown to sundown – his life or death to be determined by his own strength. And Jiajia, unlike many others, had survived – without a whimper – just as Iman himself had done all those many years before.

Like him, Jiajia had made contacts on the mainland as faraway as Xian. He was a patient learner and had a keen ear and sharp eye. He was even able to break down the sullen barriers of secrecy erected by the devious fishermen who lived on the island’s south shore.

Then Chu Shi, Jiajia’s intended, became infatuated with the off-islander, took him as a lover, became ill and suddenly died. It had changed Jiajia – made him stand up to Iman on that matter of taking her from the Earth. Made him almost uncontrollable. But he had come around lately. Although his face was now hard and almost unreadable, Iman believed his first great grandson to be loyal, and reliable, and resourceful, and smart. “Like me,” Iman thought, “like me.”

“We must collect Hesheng’s body,” Jiajia stated. “He must be buried with us.” Then he added, “Especially at a time like this.”

Everyone in the room knew what that meant. A long silence entered the room like an unwelcome guest. Finally the old man spoke, “I will see to this.” He held Jiajia’s eyes.

“It is the least we can do,” spat back Jiajia.

Iman was shocked by the openness of the challenge in the younger man’s voice. Was it what happened or the unearthing of his beloved Chu Shi that bothered Jiajia most? It was the unearthing. The other seemed to have brought him back to life. A cold, angry life, but one that Iman understood. Loss did that to young men.

Jiajia broke the silence. “Will Madame Minister . . . ?”

“We are not slaves!” Iman shouted, furious that Jiajia dared to presume. “We made our island. We make our own choices. We will act in our interests, not those of any minister in Beijing. Is that clear, Jiajia?”

Still stone-faced, Jiajia got to his feet and leaned against the mud wall of the hut.

The old man shifted in his squat and waited until all eyes turned back to him. “Is everyone prepared for the arrival of this policeman?” Affirmative grunts in many forms came from around the room. “Good. The everneighbourly townsfolk of Ching will no doubt point him in our direction shortly. More now than ever be wary of the fishermen; they are never to be trusted.”

Many nods. “We believe that others have arrived from Shanghai to help this police officer.”

The old man nodded slowly, “He’s amassing his forces.” Iman didn’t bother saying out loud, “just as I would.” He grunted then asked, “What’s this policeman’s name?”

“Zhong Fong, Iman.”

“They brought this man here then drugged and beat him?”

“So it seems, Iman, but he appears to be in command now,” his youngest great-grandson replied. The other men in the hut nodded agreement.

“Fong?” They nodded. “He’s got a simple man’s name?”

“Yes, Iman.”

“I’d like to know more about him.” He tilted his head.

A middle grandson looked at a first cousin. “It will be done.” The two men left.

“Do we go for Hesheng’s body now, Iman?” asked his first-born.

“No,” the old man replied and pushed himself to his feet. “Now we plant.” He strode out of the hut with remarkable agility and unhooked the two metal cans of shit on his doorposts and then slung them over his shoulder. “Six days of fermenting is enough. Now even this works for us,” he announced. His large brood laughed and grabbed their farm implements. They fell into line behind him, shovels, rakes, hoes and a collection of small hand-forged tools slung over their shoulders.

As they headed toward the raised terraces of the island, Iman and Jiajia looked back at the beach. Two cormorant fishermen were readying their young birds for a first session on the water. Sensing they were being watched, the fishermen looked up. Wary nods were exchanged. The farmers and fishermen lived in a complicated truce worked out over the years but unsealed by marriages between the two groups.

On the fifth terrace level, the men passed a small graveyard. Barely twenty discreet plots. Oddly small for a place that buried its own and had done so for as long as anyone could remember.

One of the graves was freshly dug. The men looked away as they passed as if looking at the turned earth would bring Jiajia’s intended, Chu Shi, back to haunt them yet again.

After two hours of grilling Hesheng’s brothers, Captain Chen and Fong met in the warden’s office to compare notes.

“So, do you think they knew about this?” demanded Fong. The younger man hesitated. “Take a guess, Captain Chen!”

“You really want me to guess, sir?”

Fong looked at his ugly young colleague. He’d seen farm animals that were more attractive. But it was possible that Captain Chen was honest; maybe he’d been born that way. Maybe that’s why the mongoose chose him. “Yes, Captain Chen, I want you to guess.”

“Fine. I guess they both – the two of them – they both knew and didn’t know.”

Fong would have put it more elegantly, but that was his assessment too. “I agree.”

“You do?”

“I do, Captain Chen. I think they both knew that Hesheng was in danger, but neither knew how or when or even if an attack was going to take place.”

“They didn’t murder their brother, then?” There was obvious relief in the statement.

“Not by anything they did,” said Fong. “But that’s only my guess.”

Chen’s anxiety increased. “Did they know about the insecticide in the water?”

“No. I don’t think so.” Fong looked away, anxious that Chen not read his face. When he turned back, the ugly young man was staring at him.

“Why bother bringing me along if you don’t trust me?”

“Do you trust me, Captain Chen?” Before Chen could answer, Fong continued, “You remind me of a young detective in Shanghai. His name was Li Xiao.”

After a breath of silence the younger man asked, “Was he a good cop?”

“Yes, Captain Chen, he was a good cop.” Fong nodded, momentarily lost in a memory. He shook it off and said, “He was the chief investigator into my wife’s death. In fact, five years ago, his testimony was central to the case that sent me to jail. So I ask you again, Captain Chen, do you trust me, a convicted felon?”

Captain Chen was cowed by Fong’s admission. He sat and looked at his stubby fingers. When he finally opened his mouth, his usually dark voice was light – breathy – as if he were about to faint. “I don’t think the world is a simple place, sir. I’ve often thought I should hand in my shield. I see both sides of everything. I can’t begin to understand how justice works.”

Fong sensed that it was unusual for Chen to speak so openly, so personally. He took advantage of the moment to plumb for information on this strange young man. “Are you married, Captain Chen?”

“I am, sir.”

“What kind of woman is your wife?”

“She’s a sad woman, sir.”

“Sir, he called me sir,” thought Fong, “but this time, like I was his . . .” Before Fong could complete his thought, the young man spoke again.

“She can’t seem to get pregnant. She wants a child. She blames me.”

Three thoughts. Three short sentences. The end of a marriage – something that Fong knew a great deal about. Fong reached for a platitude and then rejected it. Instead he said, “I think we have two killers at work, Captain Chen. One sent the snake. The other poisoned the water.”

“Both at the same time. A little far-fetched, isn’t it?” His voice still had traces of falling in it.

“It was the first opportunity. It was the prisoners’ next scheduled shower, after my interrogation. The shower facilities only allow for two at a time. It was Hesheng’s turn to wait while the other two cleaned up.”

“How did . . .?”

Fong held out a prison schedule.

Chen took it, saying, “And anyone could get hold of these?”

“Anyone who knew someone in the prison or even knew the basic workings of the place.” Fong sat in the wooden chair and drummed his fingers on his knee.

“So there was opportunity. What about motive?”

“I may have supplied that.”

Chen’s mouth dropped open. He had bad teeth as well as everything else. “How did you . . .?”

“You saw me interrogate Hesheng the first time. I was out of practice but anxious to show everyone that I hadn’t lost my skill. Well, I hadn’t totally lost my skill and you all saw. Saw Hesheng about to break. After all he’d been through, I just nudged him over the edge. Everyone knew I’d be back for more. And when I came back he’d tell me everything. He had that much weariness in him. It was like he was holding a terribly heavy rock high over his head. His knees were shaking from the strain. He wasn’t capable of bearing the load much longer.”

Chen let Fong sit with his thoughts for a moment then said, “So both groups were set into motion at the same time.”

“That’s how I see it, Captain Chen. One responded with the snake, the other with the poison.”

“You asked me to guess, so I guess that the one who used the snake killed those men on the boat and set it up as an object lesson. The poisoners tried to burn the boat,” said Chen. His voice had returned to its lower register. “It’s just a guess, sir.”

Fong looked at the younger man and smiled. He could learn to like this ugly fellow. Silently he congratulated the mongoose on his choice. “So let’s go find out who they are.”

Chen smiled and said, “And administer a little justice?”

“No, Captain Chen, let’s leave justice out of this. Let’s just find out who did this.”

“Then what?”

“Then . . . then we’ll see what to do next.”

A chorus of shouts and wails in the corridor drew their attention. Fong opened the warden’s door and peered out. Three women and a vigorous old man were shouting at the officer. The gist was clear. They wanted Hesheng’s body for burial. The officer looked to the warden who in turn looked to Fong.

Fong nodded.

“Don’t you want Grandpa to open him up?” Chen whispered over his shoulder.

“It’s not necessary. We know how he died and why he died – all we don’t know is who killed him,” said Fong as he continued to stare at the old man.

While an officer cleared the corridor, the warden returned to his office. “Who was he?” Fong asked.

“He’s the elder out there on the Island of the Halfwits. They call him Iman.”

Fong looked away. He didn’t need the mongoose to tell him that danger was near. Iman’s coal-black eyes were enough. But it wasn’t just danger he sensed. It was something else. Something ancient. Wordless.

“Who the hell kills with snakes?” screamed Madame Wu in her Beijing office. Then she remembered her youth. Of course – farmers killed with snakes. “The fools acted on their own,” she thought. “Call the warden,” she ordered her assistant, “the body’s not to be allowed to return to the island.” “Idiots,” she thought, “they don’t know where this could lead.”

As her assistant made the call, Madame Wu looked out at the capital. How far she had come from her peasant roots. How desperately important it was that they all go back to those simpler times.

Her assistant hung up the phone and turned to her. He kept his eyes down. “The body’s already been released, Madame Minister.”

“Well, that might bring this Zhong Fong to the island,” she thought. “Perhaps that’s best.” She raised her eyes to meet the assistant’s. “I want Zhong Fong’s file on my desk.” The man looked like he was about to kow-tow. “Now!” she shrieked.

As the man scrambled from her office, all she could think was that when she screamed she sounded like her mother, hands burnt from the boiling water from which she plucked the silkworm cocoons, and angry – her mother, so angry at her wasted life.

Then she picked up her private line and hissed, “Find Chen – find my son.”

Chen turned the factory lights off, plunging the space into darkness, then joined Fong, the coroner and Lily at the oval table. Once the coroner’s grumbling died down, Chen turned on the first of his overhead projectors. The transparency of the wide-angle shot of the bar room appeared full size against the wall east of the table.

The image was startlingly clear. “So that’s what a transparency does,” thought Fong.

Chen turned on his second projector. The image of the two murdered Americans lying on the bed filled the west wall.

“Who’d have guessed that the fire plug is mechanically inclined,” snarked the coroner, but there were traces of admiration in his voice.

Chen turned on the last two projectors, bringing to life the video room with the dead Koreans on the south wall and the runway room with the mutilated Japanese on the north wall.

Fong rose. He found himself literally surrounded by death. The bar room, the bedroom, the video room and the room with the runway – and him in the middle.

“Turn them off,” Fong said. His voice was harsh.

All four images disappeared. There was a moment of darkness then Chen turned on the factory lights, “I’m sorry, sir, I just thought . . .”

“Don’t be sorry, Captain Chen.”

“Shall I take down the projectors, sir?”

“No, leave them for now. Your work is good. Very good. But it gets us ahead of ourselves. Right now, I want the reports I asked you to prepare.” He looked to the coroner. “Well,” said the coroner, opening the notebook in front of him, “the guy who supplied the food for the boat party claimed that a boy came with the order and the money.”

“Did he have it delivered to the dock?” Fong asked.

“Yeah. And the guy was pissed off that they wouldn’t use his sons as waiters. The bandit claims he threatened to cancel the whole order.”

“And the Pope wears a dress,” said Lily sarcastically in English. All the men, Fong included, turned to her with questioning looks on their faces. Lily smiled. It occurred to her that this would be more fun if there were another woman around. She laughed to herself. What an out-and-out lie that was. She nodded and said in Shanghanese, “I don’t believe the restaurateur, do you?”

Fong compared “I don’t believe the restaurateur, do you?” with “And the Pope wears a dress” and, despite his comprehensive knowledge of both languages, could not find a single point of commonality between the two statements.

“Who was the boy who came with the order and the money?” asked Fong.

“The asshole didn’t know him. Said he looked retarded,” said Grandpa.

“From the island?” asked Fong, suddenly interested.

“Who knows?”

“So he cooked the food and brought it to the boat, right?”

“He prepared the food, Fong. Yes, he was very precise on that point. He prepared the food.” Each time the old man said “prepared the food” he lisped a little more.

“You make a terrifying homosexual,” said Lily. In response, the coroner added mincing to lisping.

“Who received the food at the dock?” asked Fong, trying to keep his temper in check.

“Not just food. Food and substantial quantities of liquor.”

“Okay, food and liquor. Who received them?”

“No one.”

“What?”

“He was instructed to leave it in a cart by the wharf.”

“Could he describe the cart?” asked Fong.

“He could and did – wood frame, wooden wheels, long timber poles to attach to an animal’s harness.”

“Great, that narrows it down to every farmer within a day’s ride,” snapped Fong.

The coroner began to chuckle.

“Something funny, Grandpa?” Fong demanded.

“Have you ever drunk champagne, Zhong Fong?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, this restaurateur was asked to supply champagne for the festivities.”

“So?”

“So, he was asked to supply it in bottles with twist-off caps.”

“So?”

“So, good champagne doesn’t come with twist-off caps. They have sealed tops and corks,” said Lily. Everyone looked to her. “As an attractive and available Han Chinese girl, on occasion I am treated to the delectations of the West – by boys.”

Fong was happy she hadn’t tried to say that in English. But he was concerned that things were getting out of hand. “So what, I repeat.”

“So,” Lily said in English. “Twist-off cheap, cheap. Why cheap, cheap for boat guys? No sense makes.”

Bad English or not, Lily’s point was made.

Fong began to nod his agreement as Chen and the coroner complained loudly about Lily’s use of English. In the midst of Lily’s repetition of her sentiments in Shanghanese, Fong said, “That’s how the poison got on board.”

“That would be my guess,” said the coroner. “Of course, it’s possible that the local cuisine killed these guys without the use of additives. It’s sure doing its work on me.” At that the old man’s flatulence filled the air.

“Nice, very. In a lady’s front, no less,” shouted Lily in English.

Fong grinned. Lily did not.

After a brief recess, literally to allow the air to clear, it was Chen’s turn to report on his conversation with the boat owner.

“May I point out something?”

“No,” snapped Fong, “just do what I asked, Captain Chen. Tell us exactly what was said when you interviewed the boat owner?”

“Exactly?” Chen asked.

It appeared to Fong that the man was blushing. He couldn’t guess why, so he bulled forward, “Word for word.”

Chen coughed into his hand to hide his embarrassment. Then he flipped open a notebook and read from his notes.

Q: Are you the owner of the boat that sank in the lake?

A: No.

Q: No?

A: This is China. No one owns anything.

Chen said, “He laughed then.” Under his breath he muttered, “He laughed a lot.”

Q: Are you in charge of the rental arrangements for the boat that sank in the lake?

A: Who the fuck are you?”

Q: I’m a police officer investigating the events that transpired on board that ship.

A: You talk funny and you are a seriously ugly puke.

“He stopped at that.”

“Did you threaten him, sewer rat?” asked the coroner nonchalantly.

“No,” Chen said threateningly.

“Let’s get on with it,” said Fong. “What happened next?”

“I showed him my ID.”

“Not the picture one, I hope,” gulped the coroner.

Chen looked to Fong. Fong shrugged in the coroner’s direction, “He’s overexcited because he’s out of town. What did you ask next?”

Chen took a deep breath and started again.

Q: So are you the person in charge of the boat?

A: I was.

Q: Was?

A: It’s sunk, gone, no more. So I’m not the person in charge of the boat anymore, am I? You going to write all this down?

Q: Yes. Who rented the boat from you?

A: A guy.

Q: Which guy?

A: The guy who rented the boat.

Q: You always such a smart ass?

A: Your face always look like a pimpled ass?

“Hide you ass,” Lily said in her personal variant of the English language.

“So ‘Hide you us’ means hideous. Swell.” Fong thought. But what he said was, “What did you learn from this turd, Captain Chen? What did you learn that we need to know?”

Chen put aside his notebook. “The guy had all the necessary clearances to give the boat to foreigners. His men got the boat out onto the lake, handed the controls over to the Taiwanese guy with the pilot’s licence then took one of the lifeboats back to shore.”

“Did he or his men see anyone, other than the dead men, on board the boat?”

Chen hesitated.

Before Chen could speak, the coroner piped up with, “Shit.”

Chen smiled. The smile sat oddly on his features.

“May I add my information now, sir?”

“Certainly, Chen,” Fong responded testily.

“Thank you, sir.” He took a breath, enjoying the moment then said, “They saw the girl.”

“Which girl?” asked Lily.

Captain Chen’s smile increased. He reached into his pocket and took out one of the business cards the Triad man gave him. “This one.” He flipped the coloured business card onto the table.

“Nice picture,” the coroner said.

“Doesn’t that ever go away,” Fong thought. “What about the writing, Grandpa?” he asked.

The coroner moved the card far from his face and read in a booming voice: “Sun Li Cha – Mistress of the Ancient Arts. Then some foreign scratching.”

Lily grabbed the card. “It’s English, I think,” she said in Shanghanese. The coroner looked at her. “English speaks me. It doesn’t read me,” Lily told him.

Fong took the card and read the English. “Sunny Lee - Mistress of the Cervical Arts.” Fong didn’t have a clue what that meant. But Lily was suddenly on her feet, pacing.

“I know that reference in English. I’ve heard it before,” she said in Shanghanese. “I’ve seen it on TV.”

Fong stared at her. Unless television had changed drastically during his years on the other side of the Wall, he doubted that Sunny Lee’s artistry had ever been seen on a television set in the People’s Republic of China.

“Got it!” Lily announced. “Got it! It’s that game the British play with sticks and balls on a green table. The announcer calls it (here she switched to English) ‘The Academy of Cervical Arts.’”

Fong briefly wondered if Lily knew any English at all. Then he recalled dealing with a rape case early in his time with Special Investigations in Shanghai. He remembered his embarrassment when he was forced to learn the English names for female private parts. In many ways, it was an education for him since the Chinese names were more fanciful than scientific. He remembered nodding like an idiot as the doctor briefed him on the assault. Then he took the doctor’s report home to Fu Tsong. They were eating a meal he had prepared when he chose to ask his questions. She’d at first found it funny then slowly realized that Fong was deadly serious. Embarrassed, but deadly serious. So she led him through – part by part.

It had bonded them even closer together – had made her infidelity even more devastating.

Fong spoke. “Let’s leave it that she was part of the entertainment on board ship, shall we?”

Chen took the card from Fong and flipped it over. “Personally, I thought this was of more interest.” He pointed at a phone number. Fong swore under his breath.

“It’s a local Xian number.”

“It’s probably just a cell phone,” said Grandpa.

“She’d have to register an address to get a cell phone,” said Chen.

“And I’m sure she gave an accurate account of her lodgings to the authorities, fart face.”

“Get her name and picture to Xian vice. Xian’s a big tourist town, they’re bound to know her,” said Fong.

Chen nodded, was about to say something then thought better of it.

Fong said, “Well done, Captain Chen.”

“Thank you. I can complete the transparencies if you want, sir.”

“Complete how?”

“With more projectors I can detail the floors and ceilings to go with the walls.”

“Do it, Chen.”

Chen nodded and headed out.

The coroner spat a wad across the room then said, “So who does he work for, Fong?”

Fong didn’t respond. Everything about Chen was confusing. A good cop, but a yes man. In charge, but obviously a junior officer. Fong could see him as a party man, but there was something wrong about that too. It didn’t sit well. “Didn’t stack well” was the phrase that came to him and, with a smile, he filed it away. “I don’t know, Grandpa. What’s your guess?”

The coroner cleared his throat. “He’s connected, but not like the commissioner back in Shanghai or the guy who put that leg cuff on you.”

“Then how is he connected?”

“Have you been to Beijing, Fong? No, course not, you’re just a stupid cop when all is said and done.”

“Thanks.”

“Think nothing of it.” Something sad crossed the old man’s features. “Beijing is set up in boxes, Fong. Then boxes within those boxes. And each box is kept apart from all the other boxes. Mao understood revolution, after all. And he, and those who followed him, knew how to prevent further revolutions. Stop the boxes talking to each other and make them do all their communicating through the chairman’s office. Then be sure that only the chairman’s office deals with the outside world. But sometimes boxes get it in their heads that they can make their own connections without the chairman’s office – first to other boxes and then to the world beyond boxes – beyond Beijing. Sometimes they even try to spawn boxes of their own. They’re called rogues.” He said the word rogues a second time but this time it was in a hoarse, pained whisper. “Very Chinese if you think about it. I was called once from one such box.” He paused as if something sour had touched his tongue. When he spoke again, his voice was thin. Uncertain. “A man had been decapitated in a party hotel suite. The wife had called me. She was a powerful government minister. Head of a box.” He chuckled briefly, but the sound was as dry as the air from a hot kiln. “She’d found her husband down in Shanghai with a younger woman or a boy – it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was called in. At first I thought it was through official channels. But quickly it became apparent that wasn’t the case. The wife was acting on her own – as a rogue. She wanted a death certificate stating death by natural causes. I laughed at her and told her, ‘Sure – he came so hard his head fell off.’ She didn’t laugh.”

The old man paused. Pain passed over his features like a cloud obscuring the sun. He spat angrily.

“I’m a diabetic. She knew. She told me that if I didn’t give her the death certificate, my supply of insulin would be cut off.”

Fong thought he’d never seen anyone look so old.

“I signed the papers. I got the insulin. I’m still here.” His voice was light as dust in the wind.

Fong thought about it. The coroner had covered up a murder. A crime. But if he hadn’t, he’d have died a long time ago. Would it have been worth dying to punish the party woman? Fong didn’t know. In the years since the incident, the coroner had been invaluable in bringing hundreds of cases to successful completion. Without him – who knows? Fong shook his head, but said nothing. He just filed it under “another case of relative justice.”

“So you figure Chen may be on a leash from one of those Beijing boxes, Grandpa?”

“I don’t know, Fong.”

Fong didn’t figure Chen to be with the people who set up the exhibit on the boat and killed Hesheng with the snake or with the people who tried to burn the ship and poison Hesheng.

Then a bit of logic that had escaped him fell into place. Someone sets up an exhibition of dead foreigners. What would the reaction be to that display? “How far are we from Xian?” he asked.

“It took us two hours to get here from the Xian airport,” answered Lily.

Before she could question him further, Fong continued, “And there are lots of foreigners in Xian. No?”

“Yes, stupid foreigners like clay Chinese better than living ones,” the coroner commented, smirking.

“What about foreign press?” Fong asked.

“Got to be some there,” said Lily as she leaned in closer to Fong.

“So, whoever killed those foreigners on the boat and set them up as an object lesson would want the world outside of China to know what they did. Agreed? The dead were all foreigners, after all. Chinese wouldn’t care. This would have to be for foreign consumption.”

Heads nodded slowly. Carefully.

“And what would be the world’s reaction to this sort of thing?” Before anyone could reply, Fong answered his own question, “They’d freak. All their suspicions about us, their fears of us would rise to the surface.”

“And they’d pack their bags and head back to wherever they came from,” said the coroner.

“Taking all their money with them,” added Fong.

That settled in the air of the room like something hot and heavy.

“Not something the Triads would encourage,” said Lily.

“Not at all.”

Fong’s teeth clacked.

“So, whoever did the killings on that boat and killed Hesheng with the snake wants foreign money out of China?” asked the coroner.

“Whoever did the killings, Grandpa, or whoever in Beijing induced the killings to be done,” hissed Fong. His anger surprised the others. It crackled in the air.

“A rogue,” said the coroner in a sad voice.

“That makes sense to me,” said Fong.

“I’m not sure . . .” The coroner didn’t complete his thought. He didn’t need to. Everyone in the room understood. The coroner wasn’t sure that this was worth pursuing, that he wasn’t up to another meeting with a Beijing rogue.

“And the burn marks on the ship, Fong?” asked Lily.

They all realized that they were near something very dangerous.

When Fong opened his mouth, he spoke slowly. “Beijing wants to bring foreign money into China. That’s been the government’s party line since Deng Xao Ping.” Fong folded his arms and thought, “The order to burn that boat could have come from the highest levels in Beijing.”

“How does it work, Fong? What’s the sequence?” asked Lily guiding them away from the terror of the big picture and back to the actual events of a crime.

“Chen gets the report, Lily, about the ship . . .”

“Or he claims to get the report, Fong,” said the coroner.

Fong nodded. “Agreed. He reports back what he finds – what the rogue in Beijing did – or had done – the dead foreigners set up, awaiting an audience of journalists to spread the word around the world. Beijing has a problem. Seventeen dead foreigners. Influential foreigners. No way to hide it. But seventeen dead foreigners is better than seventeen dead mutilated, gutted, castrated and decapitated foreigners.”

“So Beijing tries to burn the boat, hoping to claim that the seventeen died in a boating accident?” asked Lily.

“Right, but they got unlucky with the ice storm and the sharp rocks of the shoal.”

“So Beijing brings in the specialist and blames the three half-wit brothers?”

“So why were you sent for, Fong?” asked the coroner. “To prove they’re serious to the foreigners?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“So who sent for you? The murderers or the burners? The rogue or official Beijing?”

“The burners – Beijing.”

“Why, Fong? Why would the ones who burned the boat send for you?” asked Lily.

“Because they want to know what really happened out there,” stated the coroner and looked to Fong. Fong didn’t reply.

“So you can find the murderers, right, Fong?” asked Lily.

“In a way. They want the murderers found. But not because they want to see justice done. They want the murderers so they can trace their way from the murderers back to who ordered the murders – the rogue – in Beijing.”

The heaviness in the room deepened. Everyone understood what Fong was saying – that they were just being used in a much bigger game. That no one gave a shit about the dead men. Or maybe even who killed them. Or maybe even the Western money. The only thing Beijing wanted was the path back to the rogue in their midst.

“It would help if we knew who the specialist worked for, Fong,” said Lily.

Fong looked at her. How very much he admired this strong young woman. What a good cop she was. How her loneliness touched him. But Fong hesitated to share what was in his head because he was reasonably sure that the specialist was from yet another Beijing box – perhaps a box of one. Fong wondered if he was ill. If he was dying. If he was alone.

Fong kept it all to himself. “Whoever killed those men would want the foreign press to know about it. They must have contacted them. Lily, you follow that.”

“It’s bound to lead to Xian.”

“No kidding,” Fong said. A lot seems to lead to Xian . . . and to the island.

“So, while Chen’s looking for the hooker and Lily’s investigating the Western press, what are you going to be doing, Fong?” asked the coroner.

“I’m going to a funeral, Grandpa. Want to come?”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Fong regretted them. He had embarrassed an elder in public. Fong bowed his head slightly. The coroner waited for a beat and then acknowledged the apology. But he had no comeback. He turned from Fong and shuffled out of the dirty factory.

Fong began to follow, but Lily stopped him. “Don’t, Fong,” she said gently. “It must be terrible to be old and know as much about death as he knows.”

Fong looked at her. Sadness, like spring weeds after a storm, blossomed in her eyes.